The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe’s work package for future petaflop computer technologies beyond 2010 recently assessed 12 prototypes for next-generation computer architectures. The evaluation included full systems, system components, software prototypes, and several research activities.
For example, CSCS evaluated the PGAS programming model using the Cray Compiler Environment for UPC and CAF. CINES and LRZ jointly evaluated a hybrid system containing both thin and fat nodes and compute accelerators within a shared file system. NCF assessed a system of ClearSpeed/PetaPath accelerator boards together with the ClearSpeed programming language. CEA looked at the performance of graphics processing units (GPUs) using CAPS hybrid multicore parallel programming. The CSC studied the maturity of OpenCL and performance improvements for multi-GPU programming on NVIDIA Tesla and AMD Firestream cards. And EPCC evaluated the HARWEST Compiling Environment for developing programs on the FPGA-based Maxwell supercomputer.